On Tour With Al-Beeb

The Beeb's account of B16's visit to Istambul would be comic if it were not so tragic. On his way to the Blue Mosque, B16 stopped in at the Hagia Sophia. And what is that? Oh, it's just this old place where Christians used to gather for coffee sometimes:

Earlier, the Pope visited the nearby Hagia Sophia Museum, a site heavy with Christian and Muslim symbolism, drawing protests on the street.

The Pope spent half an hour in Hagia Sophia, a domed complex that was once a Christian centre before becoming a mosque and eventually, a museum.

"[T]hat was once a Christian centre"? Try the mother church of Eastern Christianity. And how did it "become" a mosque? Oh, well, you see it goes back to 1453, when the Turk just couldn't take any more Byzantine insensitivity to the needs of Islam. Of course, the last Byzantine Emperor would have proposed a large-scale government-funded program on mutual respect and tolerance, but he was too busy dying in combat against the Sultan's army before his own gates. That the Turk sacked and desecrated the church before turning it into a mosque was simply an expression of their very deeply offended sensibilities.

The article also notes that rioters were on hair-trigger standby in case B16 made the slightest, you know, religious sign within the church.

Hours earlier, protesters linked to an Islamist-nationalist party had demonstrated about a kilometre away, saying the pontiff's tour was an affront to the secularism enshrined in Turkey's constitution, as well as an attempt to stake a Catholic claim to the site.

The demonstrators warned that any hint of a prayer there would be deeply offensive, but the Pope refrained from any religious gesture, such as praying or crossing himself.

So, let's review:

- The Pope felt compelled to make this trip to begin with in order to "heal wounds" caused by his quotation of an earlier Byzantine emperor who believed that Islam was a violent religion.

- The Pope visits what was once the greatest church in the East but isn't anymore because of the, er, non-existent violence of Islam.

- The Pope is, in effect, threatened with this same non-existent violence if he dares acknowledge that the church was once a church.

- The Beeb goes along with this Orwellian state of affairs, not only reducing the Hagia Sophia to a mere former "Christian centre" but also helpfully pointing out that the Pope wouldn't have to be going through all this if he'd only kept his yap shut to begin with.

God help us all.